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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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ICE is deporting lots of people. Other people are recording it, opposing it, even offering bounties on ICE officers.

I have noticed a pattern where there is a horrible story that comes out. Blue tribe passes around the horrible story. There was the "black babies zip tied" story. The "deported US citizen with cancer" story. So on and so forth.

The Red Tribe waits for the Department of Homeland Security X account to post a rebuttal, and then that becomes the Red Tribe story. See for example:

https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1986198635466358989

https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1986438229373944199

https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1986086507271106982

My question is mostly, is it normal for the Red Tribe to believe the "official story" over their "lying eyes?" In the past I had seen the reverse. Official government accounts were scrutinized, eye witness accounts and video evidence were taken in higher regard.

For example, the Rittenhouse affair had Red Tribe internet sleuths piecing together video evidence of Rittenhouse's activities and movements for the hours leading up to the shootings. Within 48 hours they knew more than the prosecution's attorneys knew over a year later.

I'm not casting doubt on the DHS Official X Intern's ability to give it to us straight. I'm just trying to understand the epistemology that makes this all work. Is it Red Tribe to actually trust the government now? Just certain parts of the government?

What people actually do, if they do anything besides buy what the mainstream media is telling them at face value, is find an entity who's motivations and biases they align with, and then pick that guy's story. Sometimes the establishment consists of flaming hot liberals (Rittenhouse), sometimes it consists of based law enforcement (ICE Twitter). What "establishment" figure gets trusted more depends on whos listening.

That’s always been true. That’s just confirmation bias applied to people’s news diet. No one is different in that sense. I think that’s why you saw a push in advertising in some news outlets for a time for sites like Ground News and Inkl that try to categorize and aggregate news by coverage you see according to different accounts.